


Far From My Uniform

by Cunien



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Buddyfic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-26
Updated: 2013-09-26
Packaged: 2017-12-27 17:13:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/981487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cunien/pseuds/Cunien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Babe struggles to cope in the aftermath of Guarnere's injury, and is urged by Roe to write to his friend in the aid station. Follows from the Ardennes to the end of the war as Roe and Babe try their best to get out in one piece.</p><p>(I wrote this firmly in the "buddyfic" category but there's some definite physical contact here, so if you want to take is as a precursor to something else, by all means: take it and run with it my friends, take it and run with it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Far From My Uniform

_Dear Bill_

_Doc Roe keeps saying I should write you, says you'll be pleased to get a letter from me and I should tell ~~him~~ you how all the boys are doing, case you worry which we all know you will so there's no point denying it. Someone gave him this pen and he gave it to me and it’s real fancy you’ll be glad to know. Only the best for Bill Guarnere._

_Bet you'd just love to break out of that aid station and come right back to us but everyone here figures you done enough and now you should just get better and have a nice time of it back home._

_I been trying to think of things to write you. A lot's changed around here since you ~~got~~ went away. _

_Now it comes to it I can't think what to write. I'm sorry._

_Babe_

 

***

Babe Heffron's legs give out when they come to tell him, and he thinks: fuck, that's irony for you. 

Doc Roe and Lipton grab him and shuffle and skid their way into the foxhole, a tumble of dirt and khaki and huffs of breath. He just stares, stares and stares out at the snow-haze of trees and keeps on staring till his vision glazes over and he has to blink away the coldness in his eyes.

He struggles to pull breath into his lungs and the cold forest air pulls back. Everything in this goddamn place is a battle, he thinks. 

"They're...uh...they're gonna be okay though. Right, Doc?" 

Babe doesn't look up as he speaks, just out at the snow, the trees, the trees, the trees. He feels tired and heavy, pushed down smaller and smaller into the cold dirt walls of the foxhole as if the laws of gravity have changed and he’ll just keep going, keep going until he compacts into the hard frozen earth. He feels like a stupid kid.

"Sure they are, Babe." 

The medic says his name in a way that's all his own, and Heffron sinks a little closer into the warmth of the other man's body pressed against his. 

He can tell there is some sort of understanding passing between Lip and Roe, a silent conversation in the gazes over his head. Roe's shoulder shakes as he nods, then Lip scrambles up and out of the foxhole, says "Bill and Joe are the toughest men in the company Babe, they're gonna be just fine."

Babe likes the way he says that: _in the company._ Like they've gone to some aid station for trench-foot or something. Something small. Be back by the time we move out.

Yeah.

So he sits, and stares, and concentrates on the regular breathing of the man next to him, tries to pin himself to that rhythm: in, out, just one breath at a time. That's as far ahead as he needs to worry about for now. Just one breath ahead. 

Slowly, the haze of snow sinks into the haze of the forest at night, blue and cold and still, and Babe's not sure which he hates most: the screams of shells and broken men or the dead silence of snow falling. 

He wakes at some godforsaken hour of the morning and the only warm part of him is the tracks the tears have cut down his cheeks. Roe shuffles him closer - closer still, till he has arms around him and legs around him and he is totally encircled. He can feel the Doc's hot breath on his forehead, and it’s so obscenely alive it makes him shudder. He thought it was bad when Julian got hit, but christ, this is like nothing he's ever felt because it’s that and more, because it just keeps on coming. There's a lump like hot lead in his throat and oh fuck it's going to choke him - this is how he'll die, here in the dirt and the cold and the snow.

"S'okay," Roe soothes, hands threading through Babe's hair. His accent is warm and strange, cutting the corners off the words. "S'all okay."

It's not though, is it? The dream is still there, real as anything, real as Roe's arms around him: the blood had melted the snow to a crimson slush, and there were bodies, writhing, legless, armless, torsos. 

 

***

 

_Dear Bill,_

_Well now I feel like I can think of some things to write about, didn't feel like doing it for a long time. And you know it was so cold in those foxholes it felt like I would just snap this fancy pen I told you about in half I was shaking so much. Still, I bet you thought we'd all forgotten old Wild Bill but you know how it is when you're moving all the time and we're all real tired now. The snow won't let up. Hope it's not snowing with you. I'll be happy if I never see another damn bit of that stuff my whole life, can't believe I used to get so worked up about it when I was a kid all it is is wet and cold and fucking miserable._

_~~Muck and Penkala~~ ~~The~~    Guess you heard about Muck and Penk getting hit. Malark and Luz have both been real quiet since then and nobody can blame them, still I can't quite believe it ~~since there was no~~    ~~was nothing~~     ~~all we fou~~ _

_Perconte got hit in the ass but he's alright, everybody says it serves him right for waving it around so much. He came hobbling back from the aid station just this morning anyway so no ones feeling sorry for him anymore. It's not the same without you here but we're all glad you and Joe are out of it and O.K. I'm writing this lying on a real honest to God bed and it's been so long since we laid on mattresses nobody can quite remember how they work. We're all still surprised we can have a bed without having to dig it first._

_~~Buck ain’t~~     Dike is gone now because he ---- - ---- ---- -- ------ ---- -- ----- -- ---- --- -- --- -------- so now we have Lieutenant Speirs from Dog Company joined us in Easy who isn't a Lieutenant but a Captain now. Everybody is pleased to have him with us since he did such a good job of leading us when Dike ------ -- when we ---- --- but still we're all looking over our shoulders at him and I don't mind telling you he gives me the willies sometimes. Lipton ~~got made~~ isn't a sergeant no more because they made him Second Lieutenant which was a piece of unusually good thinking from the army and we're all real pleased about that. Didn't I tell you a lot has changed? Lip's doing well but he got sick a week or 2 ago and Doc says it's newmonia and he has to take it easy which of course he aint doing. Luz is clucking over him like a goddamn mother hen though and seeing that he's warm and O.K so Doc says he should be right as rain but it's going to take a while. Luz is making sure we get our share of the best smokes and chocolate, but the food is as shitty as ever. Still no one's complaining to be inside and with hot showers too. Me and Doc just spend a lot of time smoking and not talking about anything most times and it's funny but that's just about the best thing about this fucking place. Until last night we hadn't seen any fighting in a while so it's been good to catch our breath but the krauts are sending over some overdue christmas gifts to us every now and then courtesy of some big goddamn -------- --- they got, they come screaming over us but if it's at night I don't hardly even wake up any more. We are in a house ----------- --- ----- ---, --- ---- ----- -- --- -- -- --- ----- -- -- --- ---- ----- --------- --- ----------- which you can guess the boys weren't happy about. Soon we all know they'll want someone -- ----- ---- ----- since that's the rumour going around --- ---- ---- ---- ------ -- ------ but we're all hoping we won't have to be the ones to do it again._

_Well, better say goodbye now, it's our turn for the shower, but it feels like we'll never stop being fucking cold and dirty._

_Babe_  
  
***

 

In Haguenau Roe has a room to himself. It's actually a small storeroom in the basement of a half-bombed building, but it's better than a foxhole, and half-way to warm even if it is a little damp. The other men are in rooms nearby on hastily assembled bunks and cots, but Roe has a camp bed of his own, and even a thin mattress that Captain Speirs seemingly conjured out of thin air for him. 

It's the quiet the Doc likes best - even more than the warmth, Babe thinks. He knows how Roe feels: the men are too tired and threadbare to make much noise these days, but sometimes even the quiet mumblings and the creaking of men turning over in bed around him is too much for Babe. He tells himself this is why he goes to sit in Roe's room, even when the medic isn't there.

Roe doesn't return often - caught in an endless compulsive cycle of checking on the men - but when he does he will shut the door carefully, lean against it and close his eyes for a minute, just like always. Then he will smile, just a little, and ask if Babe is okay.

After this they will sit on the bed and smoke till the little room is grey with ribboned clouds of it. Babe doesn't remember the Doc smoking all that much before Haguenau, but whenever he offers him one now he leans over and takes it. Sometimes Babe will talk and Roe just listen, even though all he's talking about is home and baseball and girls and all kinds of shit that doesn't mean anything. The words taste dusty and wrong on his tongue. 

It takes a few days for him to get to what he really wants to say, and even then he almost doesn't say it. He doesn't want to bend these moments out of shape and make them something else, but tonight the words are just piling up behind his lips like troopers waiting for the green light, and after the patrol - after Jackson - the pressure of keeping it in is so intense Babe feels like he's swallowed a fucking grenade.

"How'd you do it?" he says, as he lights the medic's cigarette for him. The lighter flame flickers a little, as if it knows something just changed in the room. Or maybe Babe's just shaking. This close he can see the brown lines ingrained on the medic's hands, and wonders how he can bear it.

Roe looks at him, arched brow and ink-black eyes. "Do what?" he asks, shifting back to lean against the wall and easing out his legs till they hang off the side of the cot.

"Fit it all in your head. The things you see." Babe shuffles, feeling the heat rising to his cheeks and the tips of his ears. "Bill and Joe, I mean.... Muck and, an-... Penkala. Julian. When it's your buddies I just don't know... how to make it okay, you know? Make it _fit_." He drags on his cigarette, hard until his lungs hurt, but doesn't look at the other man.

"You just keep going, Doc, after everything - you see it all and....Christ." He runs his shaking hand through his hair, blinking hard. 

"Well,” Roe says, slowly, “It's different for me. I guess I...don't have...buddies.”

Babe frowns and flicks the ash from his cigarette, "What in the hell is that supposed to mean? You think...you think I shouldn't have buddies?!"

"No, Heffron. It's..," he casts about, helplessly, "Different, for me."

"And anyway, _'no buddies'_ ," Babe says trying to catch Roe's eye, "Jeez Doc, what the hell am I?! Some passing acquaintance or something?"

"You're...I mean..." he trails off, shakes his head, "Just you, I guess." 

"Well, what're you gonna do if something happens to me?" Babe asks, and regrets it almost instantly. 

Roe's face clouds - it makes Babe think of the way the snow could just descend in Bastogne, so suddenly it turned you around and whited-out your footprints before you even knew what was happening. 

"Gonna do my job,” the medic says, “Like always."

"Well....good, " Babe says, emphatically. "But nothing's gonna happen to me," he adds. 

Roe draws his knees up, eyes flicking once to the other man before settling on a spot where the mold blooms blackly on the opposite wall. "Nothing's gonna happen to you," he repeats.

It's a few minutes more of uncomfortable silence before the medic speaks again. "Thought it was you at first. Last night."

Babe is too surprised to move, just looks at the other man. "Huh?"

"I was waiting. They're calling for a medic, thought I heard them say your name, but it was Jackson," Roe sighs and scrubs his eyes with the heel of his hand. "Jackson." 

Babe has never seen him look as tired as this, and notices the deep blue hollows under Roe's eyes, stark against his paper-pale skin. He can see the veins beneath, little webbed traceries. 

"Doc," he says, trying to catch his gaze, "Ain't nothing gonna happen to me."

But there's a niggle, at the back of Babe's mind that makes his skin prickle, the hairs at the back of his neck stand up. Nothing's going to happen to him. Why? Why not? It happened to Bill Guarnere, didn't it? If it can happen to Wild Bill it can happen to anyone, quick as anything, quick as a heart beating. Or not beating.

"You carrying them around with you," Roe says, after a while, and Babe realises that the medic has been watching him. "Bill, and Joe. Julian."

Babe just looks back, confused.

"All the men we seen get hurt, all the ones we can't help, it's like we carry them on with us. Weighs us down. You got to let them go."

"How the hell do I do that, Doc? How do I fix it?"

The medic smiles, small and brittle. "I don't know. You be sure to tell me when you find out." 

His words hang there in the smoke-soft air for a moment. Babe shifts and looks down at his hands. 

"What if I can't?

Roe shrugs. "God doesn't-"

Heffron laughs, low and hollow, cuts off the medic mid-sentence.

"What?" Roe questions.

"Don't. " Babe won't stop smiling, knows it's striking somewhere deep and vulnerable in Roe but he just can't stop the cruel creaking shatter of a smile across his face. He's seen the medic, in Bastogne, praying so hard and so quiet it made Babe flush and his heart hammer just to see it. It was something he couldn't understand - just another part of Eugene Roe that's held back and away from him, out of reach. 

But he can't stop himself from saying it out loud: that before this thing he was a good little Catholic but believing is just too hard, these days. 

"If God's really up there, if he really gives a damn about us then why are we here?" Babe shakes his head then, lets the smile ease out and away. "Nah," he says, "He's not watching us. I seen no trace of God in that forest - and I seen no trace of God last night when Jackson got blown to hell either."

"Well, what are you expecting?"

"A fucking sign or something, I don't know! Isn't that how these things work?" He can feel the anger unfurling in him like a bright red flag, all the worse in the face of Roe's steady calm.

"Maybe he's already sent you one. Maybe you just didn't see it. Maybe he saved Guarnere and Toye, 'stead of taking them, and that's his sign."

The camp bed creaks and grates as Babe jerks upwards. He's not smiling now, his face twitching with the words he wants to hurl out like goddamn mortars at the other man. "Don't say that. Don't you _fucking_ say that. No way in hell I'm giving thanks to God for what happened to them."

"They still alive, ain't they?"

And just like that, the anger flees. It's pushed him to this place and gone, hollowed out his insides and then left him to fill the cavity, hell if he knows what with.

Babe leans against the door. He feels suddenly exhausted, like he's just run three-miles-up and three-miles-down. Fucking hi-ho-silver. 

***

_Dear Bill_

_I don't even know if you been getting my letters but I hope you have but I guess it don't really matter. No, I hope they're not getting through to you and that's the reason none of us has heard from you and not because you're sick or not well enough to write or something else bad. Bet it's because you having such a good time with all them nurses, I bet. We been moving a lot so I expect any letters you been sending hasn't caught up with us yet, probably get a big pile of them when we finally stop long enough to catch our breath._

_We found a place the other day and Bill, I just don't know how to write down what it was and what we saw, probably not much in point in trying or the censor (hey buddy, yeah you, cut us some slack, I promise I'm not selling secrets to no kraut spy) would block out so much of the letter you'd think I'd just sent you a sheet of black paper. But it's been a real education, I can tell you. Everybodys been real quiet, thinking about what we saw and what it means and maybe that's why we're over here. It was really something, and not a thing I want to see again if I can help it._

_I don't mind telling you Bill that it made me proud of what we're doing, but made me want to come right on home to Philly too. I never thought I'd see the like, none of us could ever think a place like what we found could really exist but we seen it now and we're not likely to forget in a hurry, that's the kind of thing that sticks with you. Made a lot of people real sad and a lot of people real mad, Joe Liebgott took it bad as it was personal like for him, but don't you worry because Web and Malark are taking care of him. Wish I could tell you more about it, but like I said I don't think they'd let me even if I could think how to write it. Guess you just had to see it for yourself, but I'm glad you didn't have to Bill because I just can't close my eyes for seeing those people in my head. Doc Roe said something a while back about carrying people round in your head and in your heart and now I think I know what he meant._

_Doc's been real busy trying to help the people there and I don't see him so much no more but when I do he looks like he's staring out farther than I can see and it makes us all sad to see him. He was in a bad shape the first night and it near scared the shit out of me I can tell you. I wish he could let go of some of them faces he's carrying around with him because sometimes it's like there's a ten ton weight on his shoulders, you can just see. What we seen was hard but he has to go and clean it up and that's not easy for anybody, even a guy like Doc. I try to help him if I can but you know he's a quiet kind of guy and I don't quite know what would be the right thing to do. So sometimes I just try and be nearby and that seems O.K, but it seems to be the Doc's always alone and that can't be easy, least we got the fellas around us to keep us going and tell us hang tough. I seen Winters come and talk to the Doc a lot and it makes us all feel glad to know that someone like Winters is looking out for him because we know he's real ~~perc~~ perseptive and always seems to know the right thing to say or do and I know Doc respects the hell outta him. _

_Hope you're well and O.K. I will try and write you again when we're in one place long enough as we're moving on from the place we've been and we're all glad for that._

_Babe  
_

***

It’s gone midnight when the Doc gets back. Babe knows because the church bell down the street had tolled the hour some time ago, and he had opened his second pack of cigarettes and continued chain-smoking the minutes away in the little attic room requisitioned for the medic. 

Roe pushes the door open mechanically, his eyes eerily blank, face grey and sweat-beaded. He doesn’t seem to see Babe, just crosses to the porcelain wash bowl on the little low table by the window, and shudders and vomits and heaves for what seems like an age.

Babe kneels next to him, carding his fingers through the Doc’s sweat-soaked hair, muttering soothing words. Inside he is guiltily praying, _begging_ for him to stop, because to see Roe so undone like this is unraveling his world from the inside out and he can’t fucking bear it.

“Doc, Doc...” Babe hums, trying hard to push the bile back down his own throat, because the medic smells of vomit and blood and death, smells like the camp they found earlier that day. “Doc. It’s okay.”

Roe looks at him, for just a second, his eyes bloodshot. Then he stands, the movement so sudden it sends Babe sprawling on his back. He’s muttering something that Babe doesn’t understand, something in French, and plucking with deadened fingers at the buttons on his shirt.

“Je ne peux pas.... je ne peux pas...enlever....j’ai besoin..,” he’s growing more frantic by the second, and his eyes aren’t blank any more, they’re bright and scared like something half wild. 

“Doc...” Babe says, inching towards the other man with arms out and palms held up, “Eugene. Please.”

Roe looks at him then, startled by his own name, used so rarely. “Eugene,” Roe repeats in a whisper, then shakes his head, a quick tight movement. “Babe,” he swallows, eyes casting around, hands still plucking at his uniform. “I got to...they smell like...get them off me!”

Babe feels something fracture, small and deep inside him.

He helps Roe get undressed, and thinks it would feel real stupid and strange to help a grown man out of his own uniform if it weren’t for the fact that the Doc is shaking like a leaf and there’s puke on his face and he won’t stop muttering, sometimes in French and sometimes in English but it doesn’t matter because Babe can’t make out the words.

When Roe is down to his underwear Babe manages to calm him enough to make him lie down on the little bed, and sits next to him. He doesn’t want to be alone tonight, doesn’t think he can sleep, and he didn’t even have to stay _there_ and do whatever the hell the Doc’s had to do for the past twelve hours. 

So he thinks the medic probably wants him to stay, but other than that Babe has no fucking clue what to do, and that makes his nerves jingle and start low in his belly. He’s been so far off the map since they found _that place_ , so far off he’s not sure they’ll ever find their way back.

“Liebgott?” Roe asks after a while, his voice raw and cracked.

“He’s fine.”

Then, after a moment: “You okay?”

“Jeez Doc, I’m fine. So's Liebgott. Just try and sleep.”

“Can’t”

“Yeah. Me neither.”

Then Babe is washed from head to toe with heat like someone just dumped a bucket of hot water over his head, because Roe is curled in on himself and Babe thinks he’s crying, he thinks the Doc is crying. He’s silent, just heaving in shuddering breaths, but the bed is shaking underneath them and Babe can’t look down at him, Jesus Christ he can’t look at him. He can barely breathe or move or think, just sits there and feels small and stupid and worthless because he has _no idea what to do._

He thinks about Bill - about how he always knew how to be when Bill was around. But now he’s gone and no-one’s heard from him and here Babe is, sitting on a bed in God knows where in Germany, wondering how in the hell a grown-up is supposed to act.

He thinks about sitting in a foxhole in the snow in the middle of the night, crying like a baby, Roe’s arms around him and his warm strange voice whispering how everything was okay. And he didn’t believe him, but the medic said it like he meant it, said it with such conviction like the words could help him as much as morphine and bandages and plasma.

And they did, in the end. The nightmare still came, still came even now, but he made it through that night, and the next, and the next.

Babe scoots down and lies behind Roe. He thinks about the Doc’s arms and legs around him in that freezing foxhole, curls his body around the other man and pulls him close. There’s a quick hot rush of _strangeness_ , because even if he received this kind of intimacy from Roe in the past he’s never given it before, not to another man. But he realises, suddenly, that this is as much for him as it is for the Doc. And in that foxhole Roe was clinging on to Babe as tightly as he was to the medic.

“S’all okay,” Babe whispers, and tries very, very hard not to cry. “One breath ahead."

***

 

_Dear Bill_

_War's over, can you believe that? Or at least it is here in Europe._

_I got to tell you Bill I got no idea what to think about that. Feels like we've been pushing and pushing on a door and somebody just opened it and sent us flying, now we got to figure out how to get back up again_

_\------- is a pretty fine country and we're all enjoying the sunshine you can guess. It's real pretty round here and so are the girls, all blonde and healthy like and all the boys are enjoying the view on the trucks on the way up here you can guess, but now everybody's got just one thing on their mind. Lieb won't shut up about the girl he's going to find to marry him back home (yeah, he should be so lucky, that's what I thought too) and Luz and Perco are chasing farm girls looking to fraternize, everyone's gone crazy trying to find some tail to chase. I been teasing Doc about it too but you know what he's like, just smiles and that's it, I think he likes being all mysterious and quiet but I know he just needs a little fraternizing like the rest of us._

_Bill, they got mountains here like you never seen, there's snow but it's right on top and we're all real happy for it to stay there and us down here thankyou very much. We been swimming a lot in these big lakes they got here but they're goddamned cold and no one likes to be cold anymore, we had enough of that. There's some big houses here full of lots of real expensive looking stuff though most of it's ---- ------ -- Captain Speirs before poor honest guys like us --- ---- - ---- --. Lt Welsh bitches about it but I don't mind much, don't want to carry too much around with me anyway._

_There's plenty of drink to go around and fresh food too, which we're all enjoying, and they got these cars just lying around, real fancy ones. Luz is driving like a lunatic, all boozed up, I got in a car with him today and I tell you Bill I never will again, he drives like he's dancing and it's not fun when you're zipping round those mountains I told you about earlier. Me and Perco and Malarkey were all sitting in the back screaming for our mothers and telling him to stop but he just laughed and laughed. And suddenly I thought how ever since Muck and Penkala Luz has been trying hard to make everyone else smile but I don’t think I’ve seen him do it once, not properly, not once since then and he’s been having a real rough time of it lately you could just see. And there he was laughing like we hadn’t heard him do since God knows when, which was sort of nice to hear so we just didn't have the heart to gripe too much about it. Still I'm going to drive him off a cliff one of these days, see if that'll teach him a lesson though I just bet it wouldn't._

_But really we're all getting on just fine so there's no need to worry about us._

_Alright Bill, I gotta go, somebody's saying something about Hitler's champagne and I know you wouldn't want me to miss out on that. I'll drink a bottle for you._

_Babe  
_

***

"Hey George, c'mon, it ain't funny to give your buddies a fucking heart attack on VE-Day okay? Just come back through the window."

Luz laughs, and it could sound almost like he meant it. Almost. "Never knew you cared so much, Babe," he smiles, taking another swig from the bottle.

"What the fuck is he drinking?" Babe hears Perconte mutter to Malarkey behind him, "'Cause whatever it is remind me not to let him have it again, it's making him fucking loopy."

"It ain't _making_ me loopy Frank. I've always been this way," Luz throws casually over his shoulder, but he won't turn to look at them and he won't come in off the roof. 

"Hey Frank," Babe says quietly to Perconte, "Maybe you should go get Doc."

Perconte nods once and jogs from the room.

"VE-Day," Luz whistles, and he's trying so hard to sound normal, Babe can hear the strain about to crack his voice in two. "Goddamn VE-Day. Drinks all round!" Luz swigs from the bottle in one hand and drags at the cigarette in the other. "Time to fucking celebrate."

"George," Malarkey says, leaning next to Babe out of the window onto the flat roof beyond. "Come inside. We got booze and Luckies, somebody even said they seen Talbert and Janovec with some honest-to-God frauleins."

Luz just stays there, sat with his legs dangling over the edge of the fourth storey roof, alternating methodically between the bottle in his left hand and the cigarette in his right. 

"You think I'm gonna jump, Malark?" Luz swigs from the bottle, seems to consider it. "'Maybe. Long way down." He kicks his feet and chuckles, sings _"We never fall upon our feet, we always hit our ass."_

"It ain't funny, George," Malarkey spits, gripping the windowsill with whitening knuckles. "You get back through this goddamn window right now or so help me God I'll throw you off the fucking roof myself!"

"But it is funny Malarkey! It's fucking VE-Day! Except only for us bastards still standing. And you want to know the funniest part?" Luz asks, "I don't think I even want to go home! Back to being a fucking handy-man. Liberated Europe and oop! There you go. Back to being _Mister_ George fucking Luz."

“Yeah, what’s so bad about that?” Malarkey asks.

Luz’s voice is bright, full of mirth, but there’s something bitter and corroded underneath. “Not even the only one. You know there’s my old man George,” he says, ticking them off, “And my cousin George, and my other cousin George. Too many goddamn George Luzes.”

Babe doesn’t even know Roe is in the room until he feels him squeeze up next to him and lean through the window. He lets himself breathe a little, the tension starting to uncoil inside him. Babe’s seen Doc calm men with half their insides on the outside, seen him talk down troopers with bloodshot eyes and pistols pressed against the foreheads of Kraut prisoners.

 

"Hey fellas, hey George. What's going on?" Roe asks.

"Ah not much, Doc," Luz replies, "Just contemplatin’ how truly screwed-up we all are."

"Speak for yourself, dumbass," Perconte grumbles. 

"You don't think we could maybe have this conversation inside, George?" Roe’s tone is easy and calm, and Babe marvels at it.

"Scared of heights, Doc?” Luz continues in his best Colonel Sink voice, “Hate to tell you son, but maybe the Airborne ain't for you."

“That’s real good, George,” Roe smiles.

“Yeah. I collect ‘em,” Luz says, matter-of-factly, “Voices. Voices are easy. Got ‘em all up here,” he raps his knuckles on the side of his head. “Got Muck and Penkala up here.”

The room falls dead quiet, nobody even moves, and Babe is overcome with the hysterical desire to laugh or shout. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Malarkey’s face turn ashen.

“Yeah, see, ‘cause they were calling me, Doc,” Luz says, and he says it like he’s telling one of his funny stories, _hey fellas, you heard this one before?_ Except no one has, because Babe knows he’s not talked about Muck and Penkala’s death, not once. 

Luz swigs the last few drops from the bottle, contemplates it blankly before opening his grip and letting it slip straight down, four storeys, to smash against the steps below. “And I can hear their voices, _all...the...fucking...time_. So. Happy goddamned VE-Day.”

“They were more than voices, George,” Roe says quietly, after a while. “You too.”

“I don’t want to do it,” Luz’s voice is small and hitched. “I ain’t gonna do it.”

“You’re a good soldier,” Babe says, “Good radioman. Buddies with every man in this company, even schmucks like us. Even when you pull stunts like this.”

“George,” the Doc says, quietly. “George. S’okay. Come on inside.” He reaches out, out past Babe, out into the dark, and it’s the first time Babe’s ever seen the Doc’s hands when they weren’t ingrained with blood. “Let’s get you inside.”

Luz heaves a shaky sigh, and flicks his cigarette butt out into the night, a little pin-wheeling point of light that blinks out in the shadows. Then he shuffles round, takes the outstretched hand and shimmies back through the window.

Malarkey marches over and grips him tight by the shoulders, then socks him, hard in the jaw.

“Jeez Malarkey,” Luz says, smiling just a little, but Malarkey only throws himself down on the once-plush sofa and downs half a bottle of anonymous alcohol.

“Wasn’t ever gonna do it,” Luz mumbles, “I just…”

“We know, George,” Roe says, “But no more moonlit walks on the roof for anybody now,” he warns the room.

“Yeah, Doc’s orders,” Babe adds.

“Hey Doc,” Luz says, catching him by the arm before he leaves, “Don’t...ah. Don’t tell Lip, wouldya? Or Winters. Or _Speirs_ ,” he adds, paling a little.

Babe and Roe find a relatively quiet corridor, though the whole hotel is full to bursting with reveling paratroopers, men spilling out of doorways and whooping down the hallways. They sit, backs against the wall and knees drawn up, and Babe offers Roe a cigarette.

“You think he’ll be okay?” Babe says, after a while.

The medic exhales a cloud of smoke. “Yeah. Yeah I think he’ll be okay.”

“You think he was ever gonna do it?”

“No,” Roe says, “Prob’ly not.”

“Jeez,” Babe huffs, thinking back to that pub in Aldbourne, losing two packs of smokes to Buck and Luz. “What would we do without George Luz?”

“You know, when I was a kid we saw this circus trick: guy gets someone out of the crowd, makes ‘em lie down across a couple of chairs, then takes them out one by one till they’re just floatin’ there, like magic.”

The Doc contemplates his cigarette, nods.

“Like fuckin’ magic,” Babe continues. “Every time we lose a Toccoa man feels like they’ve taken another chair away. Except there’s no fuckin’ magic in the army.”

“And the war’s s’pposed to be over,” Roe agrees.

They sit there for a while, smoking and listening to the shouts and laughter all around them. 

“You don’t wanna be out there, tearin’ it up?” Roe asks, nodding in the direction of the noise and light spilling out down the hallway.

“Nah. Don’t much feel like it,” Babe replies.

“Me neither,” Roe says, then, “You gonna write Sergeant Guarnere? Wish him happy VE-Day?”

Babe swallows. “Yeah,” he says, “Guess so.”

 

***

_Dear Bill_

_Well I really wish you was here with us today, Bill. ~~Chuck Grant got~~ Grant got --- ---- -- some I Company replacement last night. He's alive but not doing so well as the --- ---- --- in the head and there's not much that the Doc can do for him. Captain Speirs and the Doc found some surgeon says he can help but half the boys went out to look for the guy --- ---- Grant and found him, man we were so mad. I didn't think I could see something as would make me feel so sick as what I seen in Belgium and then in --------- but I was wrong and then some. Everybody was real mad. To think the war's over and everybody thought they was going to maybe make it out ~~in one~~ O.K at least until Japan then this happens, and one of our side too. Story goes Grant was trying to help some British soldier --- ---- by this guy on the side of the road when the bastard ---- ---- --- ---. I never seen the boys so worked up, Johnny Martin went crazy, only Bull could stop him from punching the guys face clean off when we caught him. Then Captain Speirs came and we all thought the guy was done for, but in the end Captain Speirs handed him over to the MPs and I expect that's the last we'll see or hear of that, everybody's real keen to keep it hush. I bet this letter won't even get through to you, especially with the censor blocking out everything (fuck off, buddy) but I got to write it anyway. We was all pretty mad. George Luz took one look and went as red as anything and walked right out, he said he was mad but couldn't do nothing about it but I could see he wanted to. Everybody else got stuck in, me too, but I don't remember a whole lot of it._

_Doc found me later, I could tell he was kind of mad at us for what we did or mad at me anyway which made me mad right back at him. But when I last seen him and how tired he is and how I don't think he's eating much either I stopped being mad. Sometimes he acts so different I think he don't feel things like the rest of us but I know he does, maybe feels it more than us in the end, and that seeing Grant get hurt here for no reason at all was just about the last straw for him. I keep looking at him and hoping I don't see that Crazy Joe McLusky look in him like we did with Buck back when because I think if I do it'll about finish me and everyone else here off._

_You know we all seen bad things before and we know they can happen but no one was expecting this thing with Grant to happen here now after everything._

_I don't know if you're getting any of these letters._

_Babe_

***

“Your hand. Let me see it.”

Babe is sitting out on the steps behind the hotel when Roe finds him. He’s filthy drunk, about as drunk as he’s ever been, wavering somewhere between screaming his lungs out and folding right in on himself with rage. He thinks about that foxhole in Belgium, about feeling small and worthless and like the world was pressing in on him. The need to smash something, to utterly fucking _destroy_ is raging within him. He’s scared of what he’s going to break. 

“Nothin’ wrong with my hand,” he mutters, taking another swig from the bottle. Schnapps, he thinks. Fucking German schnapps.

“Give me your hand, Heffron.”

The Doc doesn’t raise his voice, but the words are snapped and tight, as close to an order as Babe has ever heard him give. 

“Now.”

Babe looks up at him then, right in his eyes, and they stay that way for a while even though Babe knows he hasn’t got a hope in hell of out-staring Eugene Roe. Without breaking eye contact he heaves the bottle out into the night, hears it shatter against something hard and thinks, yep, that’ll do it.

He holds out his bloodied fist like a challenge and the Doc crouches next to him, already rooting around in his bag. 

“Don’t look at me like that.”

Roe lifts his eyes from Babe’s hand and glances at him before going back to work. “Ain’t looking at you like anything, Heffron.”

“I can feel you looking at me like that. Even when you ain’t looking at me like that. So...just...fuckin’ _don’t_!” he snaps, feeling his voice rip and tear at the end, a high note of desperation behind the ragged words.

Roe sighs and sits back on his heels. “Heffron, I’m lookin’ at your goddamn hand ‘cause it’s busted to hell.”

“Ah fuck you!” Heffron yells, tearing his hand from Roe’s grasp and standing up suddenly. He trips down the steps, feeling the world lurch around him. “You don’t have to say it ‘cause I know what you’re thinking, I know you’re mad at me but that bastard _fuckin’ deserved it_.”

“Maybe he did,” Roe says calmly, standing too.

“No, no maybe, no _maybe_ , Doc! He fucking shot Grant! In the head!”

“Yeah. And Grant’s gonna be okay.”

“No Doc he’s gonna _live_ , that ain’t the same thing and you know it,” Babe spits.

They stand there, looking at each other, the silence yawning like something vast and terrible between them. 

“Everybody did it.” Babe’s voice is small, wavering. 

“Not everybody,” Roe says, blinking and looking away at last. He bends to pick up his discarded bag.

Babe tries to get the ground level underneath his boots, and starts to walk away.

“I’m just fuckin’ tired.”

The words make Babe stop, like someone just hit the brakes, just pummeled all the air out of him. He’s never heard the Doc swear before, not properly.

Babe turns, and suddenly he doesn’t have the strength or the will or the care to stand anymore. He lets his legs crumple and sits on the ground, still warm from the sun even now after dark. Fucking German sun, he thinks. Fucking German ground.

Roe sits too, cross-legged, and they stay there ten feet apart, looking at each other. 

“Me too, Gene,” Babe says, rubbing his eyes. He wishes he hadn’t thrown that bottle away now, needs something to hold, something do with his hands.

“M’not mad at you,” Roe says after a while, “Just mad at...everything.” He shuffles around in his bag and extracts a cigarette, tossing the box over to Babe. “It’s all just blood in the end, don’t matter who it’s comin’ from. I just can’t stand the sight of it no more.”

He lights the cigarette with hands that Babe can see shaking, even from a distance, even in the dark.

“The more I get sick of hurting the more I just want to hurt someone,” Babe says, and it’s barely more than a whisper. 

“Yeah well you can’t let that win, Babe,” Roe says fiercely, leaning forwards. “ _We_ can’t. ‘Cause I feel that way too but you said it yourself: being alive ain’t the same as being okay. It ain’t _enough_ just to get out of this without bein’ hit.”

And Babe knows he’s right. Because even if their sorry asses make it out of Europe, then Japan in one piece, they’ll never truly be able to go home. Babe thinks of his mother and wants to cry. 

Being alive and being okay. Bill Guarnere is alive - or was, the last time Babe saw him. But hell if he knows if he’s _okay_. Hell if he knows if anyone is, anymore. 

He sucks hungrily at his cigarette, as though the smoke could fill him up and leave no space for anything else.

“So we’re screwed,” he says.

“No. Not yet.”

“How do we fix it?”

Roe sighs and looks up at the clear night sky. "I don't know. You be sure to tell me when you find out." 

 

***

_Dear Bill,_

_Grant's going to make it, Doc says. But he aint woken up yet and no one can say when he will or if he'll be okay when he does since getting a bullet in the brain ain't exactly a walk in the park._

_Doc and me ain't mad at each other anymore. We're just mad at everything else and trying to figure out how not to be._

_I been trying to find out where you're at but no one seems to know, looks like you been from one aid station to the other and then just disappeared somewhere._

_You been getting any of these letters Bill?_

_I hope you're O.K._

_Babe.  
_

 

***

"For the last time Babe," Perconte sighs, "I don't know! You get the name, rank, outfit, it goes through Battalion HQ or something, the army just gets it to them.”

"Or doesn't," Luz mutters around his cigarette.

"Frank, you gotta know more!"

"Jesus Babe I don't know, it's just works!" Perconte snaps, squinting at the cards Luz just dealt him.

"Or doesn’t,” Luz repeats.

"Being a mailman back home ain't like knowing how it works in the army, so just give me a break. Go bug Vest, he’ll know." 

“Yeah, I already have, and he doesn’t,” Babe sighs.

“Well Jesus, go bug Doc then! But goddamn leave me alone!”

“Or pull up a chair, I’ll deal you in,” Luz adds.

“Do _not_ deal him in, George.”

 

***

_Bill,_

_We’re going to Japan._

_Why ain’t you wrote me back?_

_Nobody can tell me if you’re even still alive, Bill._

_I’d know it if you were dead._

_I’m sure I’d know it._

_But you ain’t wrote me. And we’re going to Japan._

_I can’t do this any more.  
Babe._

 

***

 

Doc Roe frowns over his shoulder, before turning from the boxes of bandages he’s been counting in the medical supply tent and facing Babe.

“No Babe,” he says, “Was a gift. You can’t give back a gift.”

“I don’t need it no more. So thanks. But I don’t need it no more,” Babe answers, trying to keep his tone cool and level.

“Babe-”

“Take it.”

“I can’t-”

“Just take the goddamn pen Gene!”

The medic huffs a sigh and takes the pen from his outstretched hand. Babe’s been walking around with it in his pocket for so long he feels strange somehow, without the weight of it there. But it’s the right thing to do. He doesn’t need it anymore.

“You ain’t writing no more letters, then?” Roe asks carefully.

“Yeah well when you’re sending them out into thin air what the hell point is there?”

“Sergeant Guarnere still ain’t replied?”

Heffron just looks at him. “He’s dead. He’s dead or he doesn’t give a shit. Either way I ain’t writing any more letters.”

"You think that's true?" Roe says after a while, quiet and soft, tone level. "You really think that Bill Guarnere is dead?"

Babe tears his gaze away, looks at his boots, outside at the trees and the lake beyond, at his boots once more. "No," he says, sullenly, “I don’t know.”

"Because Babe, I seen a lot of death and I seen a lot dying, and after a while you get to know when a man ain’t got long. And Guarnere wasn't like that." He shakes his head, tries to catch Babe's eyes again. "He wasn't like that Babe and I wouldn't lie to you. S'gonna take more than that to take him out."

"Then why the hell haven't we heard from him? Huh? You been telling me to write him and I’ve wrote him so tell me now Doc: why ain't he wrote back?"

"You gotta give him time."

Babe laughs, but it’s something clipped and harsh and it makes Roe flinch. “It’s been five fucking months, Doc!”

“Yeah? How goddamn long you think it’d take _you_ Heffron, you get hit like that?” Roe replies, just as harsh. “You can’t say how long. You can’t say anything. Nobody but Bill can.”

“But I...”

“You needed him to answer,” Roe states, and all Babe can do is swallow around the hole inside him. “And that’s okay,” the medic says, tone softer now. “I know you need him. And I can’t...I can’t do for you like he could, not in the same way.”

Babe wants to disagree but it’s true, it’s so very true. He and Roe have been clinging to each other like drowning men since Bastogne, and he knows somewhere deep and vital that there’s no breaking that bond, not ever. But Bill gave Babe something else: an illusion, that he was strong enough to be like him.

He feels like he’s been about six different people since Bill, six different Babes but each one just as fucked-up and useless as the next. 

Only when Bill was here he didn’t know it. If Bill was here Babe would still be walking around feeling like a big man, feeling like a soldier, when he knows now it’s the biggest goddamn lie the army ever told. 

He wants to go home. Wants to drink sodas in the drugstore and play baseball, scrap with his buddies behind the playing field and make out with Doris in the back seat of the movie theatre and look for some stupid shitty job somewhere. He wants to go back: back to the Babe who existed in blissful ignorance, before the war. He’s not a big man. He’s not a soldier.

“Babe,” Roe says, and his voice is desperate now, “Whether you hear from Bill or not you’re gonna have to find a way to get _goin_ ’. You have to. ‘Cause this is the kind of thing makes a man give up, or move too slow. And you told me nothing was gonna happen to you.”

Roe is looking at him now, swallowing hard like he’s trying to keep himself tied down. “You said it like it was a promise. And _I_ need that, from _you_. You are a grown-up,” he says, eyes pleading, "You got responsibilities."

“I just been...” Babe starts, feeling stupid, “I just been trying to take it one breath at a time, not think ahead.”

“Yeah, well if this war don’t end soon we’re goin’ to Japan. And we ain’t making it through one hell just to die in another. So you got to start thinking about tomorrow, too.”

It’s a shock, almost, to hear such naked _need_ in Roe’s voice. Even when he was puking and shaking and crying on that bed back in Landsberg, even _then_ Babe doesn’t think the Doc was as wide open as he is right now.

The shame floods Babe, taints his cheeks and ears with flushed red. And maybe this is it. Maybe this _is_ being a grown-up, being a big man: people needing you. He'd worked so hard to get Roe to let him in, he never once stopped to think about what that would mean.

“You think maybe that’s how we fix it?” he asks, tentatively.

“Maybe,” Roe says, looking out at the blue lake of Zell am See. “Guess we gotta try it and see, eh?”

 

*****

 

Epilogue

***

_Dear Babe,_

_I'm sorry I haven't wrote you till now, they been moving me around all over the place, I been sleeping a lot and you know I'm not much for letter writing. You know I wouldn't want no one to be worried about old Wild Bill but sometimes it's just hard to think what to write especially in a place like this. And that's too many goddamn excuses I know but I just hope you understand._

_But I been saving up paper so this letter's gonna be real long to make up for me going so quiet for so long on you._

_It ain’t been easy. I ain’t ashamed to say. I just couldn’t think what to write. For a while I just felt like everything was different now and wouldn’t ever be the same again, I couldn’t think about yesterday or tomorrow or anything but right now and that was hard enough. Sometimes all I could do was just lie there and concentrate on breathing and that’s as far ahead as I could think, just one breath ahead. I kept all your letters but couldn’t open them, not for a long while. But slowly because everything is slow in this place I started feeling like my old self again. Now I figure it aint really different. I’m the same Wild Bill. There’s just a little less of me._

_But when I felt had the balls to open them your letters have been good to read and to hear about the boys back on the line._

_You said you been spending more time with Doc Roe and that's good, you stick close to him when you go to dance with the Japs. I'd appreciate it if you could pass on my regards to all the boys, but tell Doc especially thanks from me. He was real good to me and Joe when we got hit, don't think either of us could have been so calm if it weren't him that was seeing to us. That's no bitch against all the other medics, but you know that Doc's just got a way about him, and it was a real comfort to both me and Joe I'm sure._

_Don't you be too cut up about it, neither. Aid stations ain't pretty but you know I'm one tough S.O.B so I'm alright. I'm still itching for a fight but glad to be out of it, too. I know now I'm no good to the Airborne no more. Took a while for that to sit right with me, I can tell you, but I get it now. I was real mad for a real long time, still am a little I guess but I tell you something when you're in a place like this and you get hit like I did you realise pretty quick you need all your thinking to be about getting better or just staying alive and being mad is just a waste of everything. I seen enough guys just stop trying because they were so et up with being mad and I decided that ain't gonna be me no sir._

_I been trying to follow Easy as you go along but as you know it's hard to get a hold on you boys though most often you'll be wherever everybody else is too damn scared to be. But all news is old news here so I been feeling like I'm trying to play catch up all the time. Last I heard for sure without the fucking censor blocking it out (don't you got better things to do, buddy?) you was in someplace called -------- but I gotta tell you I got no clue where the hell that is, could be half way to Japan for all I know._

_You got to start thinking about the end of the war now, it's okay to let yourself do that especially if it makes you tread more careful and get you out of this thing ~~in one~~ O.K. Lipton has wrote me too and said you took it kind of bad when me and some of the other boys got were went away. I heard about Muck and Penkala and shit Babe that must have been bad, I got to tell you I been thinking about them almost every day and it's easy for me to pretend they're still out there with the rest of Easy because I don't have to be out there every day and it don't seem real to me but it must have been real hard for all the boys and I wish I coulda been there to say hang tough._

_I been doing a lot of thinking here, christ knows there ain't much to do and plenty of time to do it but you see I just think it's luck of the draw and if one of them bullets or shells got your name on it that's it, no way out. Makes you think how easy it is to get blown to hell and how it's just crazy luck that you or Luz or Malarkey or somebody weren't there with Muck and Penkala. I know Malark must have taken it real bad as everybody knew Skip and him were as thick as thieves but I hope he's doing O.K now. Lip says George was pretty cut up about it too as he saw the whole thing right in front of his eyes though of course he won't let anyone know that he took it bad. You tell Lip from me to keep an eye out for Luz because Malarkey's a smart S.O.B but we all know Luz's just a big mouth and no brain and thinks making a joke means he don't have to think about ~~with~~ all the shit like the rest of us. I would write Luz but I know he don't read so good so you just pass on regards from me. Guess he’s got a ticket to Japan too since he never got hit either._

_There's some real pretty nurses out here but they don't know shit about what's going on, and I'm stuck here surrounded by fucking dogfaces which I'm not happy about as you can guess. One of those infantry chumps started talking real loud about how he did this in Normandy and that in Belgium and then had the nerve to say he and his buddies held Bastogne single handed which was where I came in and gave him what for which put an end to his bragging you can guess. Bastard was wearing jump boots he must have stolen off some trooper too which was what really made me see red. Got plenty in trouble for that one but I tell you it was worth it, Wild Bill taught him a thing or two about Paratroopers he ain't never going to forget._

_But they got real nice food for us here some days, not that k-ration shit, real food. On VE-Day we had steak as a special treat though it was so small you would have said it was a disgrace, not sure what the hell kind of tiny cow that thing came from. No matter though because some of the boys here don't have a real good appetite so you can rest assured Bill helped them finish up their food._

_Haven't seen any of ol’ Joe Toye since we got split up soon after we got to the first aid station and we were both knocked out with morphine on the way there we couldn’t make out which way was up or down - now I know why Doc’s been hoarding that stuff so long, I tell you it’s like fucking magic. Anyway, I'd like to write Joe but I don't know where to send a letter. Don't really know if I could find the words, neither. I'd like to tell him it's O.K too, that I'm O.K. I would have done the same thing again and I'm damned proud of what I did, would have done it for any one of Easy and know they would do it right back for me._

_Christ I feel proud to be a part of Easy Company. Best damn company out there. Best damn men. I’m real proud to have served with all of the boys and with you Babe, ‘cause you’re a good goddamn soldier and don’t you ever forget it. You came in with all those other kids green as grass and somehow you made it where the others couldn’t and that takes a lot Babe, a whole hell of a lot._

_Keep your head down now Babe don't do nothing stupid and I know that's real hard for a lummox like you but you better damn well try for Bill's sake. The boys here all jabber like a load of old broads, there's not much else to do, and we hear a lot of news says surely the war in Japan will be over soon too if we can do there what we done in Europe._

_Well best say goodbye now, one of those pretty nurses I was talking about just now's come to help me get dressed. You know I can do it myself just fine but this one looks like Ava Gardner and I'm not about to disappoint ol’ Ava, as you can guess._

_Stay out of trouble. I’ll see you back in Philly, kid._

_Your buddy,_  
Bill Guarnere.  
  
****

**Author's Note:**

> The incident with Luz is based on a similar situation in Malarkey’s book Easy Company Soldier, where after returning from Normandy, Malarkey talks Joe Toye off the roof one night. I made it Luz here because I’ve always wanted to know more about Luz’s obvious coping-mechanism of being the smartarse of the company, and how that could only get him so far when it came to the trauma of witnessing Muck and Penkala’s death.
> 
> The title is from a heartbreakingly gorgeous song by Joe Pug, "Bury Me Far From My Uniform", and since this fic is really all about the boys trying to justify who they are with who the army have made them, I thought it fit nicely.
> 
> Typos, mis-spellings and grammatical errors in the letters are all Babe and Guarnere's - anything not in a letter is my fault. I based the letter writing style on, obviously, the voices of the guys but also on the hundreds of letters my grandfather sent home to his parents during WW2, which I have been typing up to include in a book.


End file.
